


The First Wild Night

by binz, shiplizard



Series: Queer Fancies [1]
Category: Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: 19th Century, Age of Sail, Altered States, Community: kink_bingo, Consent Play, Dirty Talk, Fantasy, M/M, Rape Fantasy, Shaken and Limp, Shared Fantasy, What Happens In Kingston, drunk, heat - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 13:03:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/binz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiplizard/pseuds/shiplizard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newly-minted Commander Hornblower considers that the odd shadows that lurk in his mind make him unlovable. Lieutenant Bush considers that Commander Hornblower is just delicious, shadows and all. Add them together in Kingston and stir.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Wild Night

**Author's Note:**

> **Content note:** Per the tags, this contains a rape fantasy, discussed between the fantasizer and object of the fantasy. The discussion is consensual, but the scenario discussed may be triggering. 
> 
> Contains casual sex-shaming, kink-shaming and homophobia.
> 
> \----
> 
> “A hundred pounds to spend, a couple of days’ leave granted by Captain Cogshill, and Hornblower at a loose end at the same time — those two days were a lurid period, during which Hornblower and Bush contrived to spend each of them a hundred pounds in the dubious delights of Kingston. Two wild days and two wild nights, and then Bush went back on board the _Renown_ , shaken and limp, only too glad to get out to sea and recover.” - **Lieutenant Hornblower**
> 
>  
> 
> “Somewhere just over the gloomy horizon of Hornblower’s mind there lurked fancies stranger yet; dark phantoms of rape and murder.” - **The Happy Return**

The bed creaked as someone rolled onto it, smelling strongly of rum and quite overheated in the humid West Indies night, hot, sweaty skin brushing his own bare torso for a brief moment. “Beg pardon, sir,” said Bush, his lips close to Horatio’s ear.

Horatio squinted, peering in the dim light until the blurry shape before him resolved itself into Bush, bare-chested as Horatio was, his breeches and stockings abandoned entirely-- undressed for the heat like Horatio himself, and yet so much more beautiful than Horatio himself. Horatio jerked his eyes to Bush’s face. Bush pressed his cheek to the mattress and smiled joyfully, if somewhat muzzily, at him. 

“Good evening, Mister Bush,” Horatio said, his voice dry, thick with drowsiness. He was almost startled to hear it, to know that he was awake after all. It was damnably hard to know in this heat, with his own body warmth and the bedsheets impossible to tell apart, his mind spinning through thoughts and dreams and memories as if they were the same. “I trust you are well?”

“Oh yes, sir,” Bush assured him, still smiling dreamily. “I am quite content. Do you know, I believe I have spent half my prize money already.”

Even in his half-awake state, mathematics that simple were not beyond him, and Horatio said, “That is good, then. We are halfway through our leave, and you are halfway through your prize money. As, I believe, am I. At this pace we should reach insolvency just in time for you to go aboard.” 

The warm, barely comprehending look Bush gave him sent a little shock of dark pleasure down to Horatio’s toes, and he must have betrayed it in some way as Bush’s expression turned questioning. “Sir?”

“Nothing, nothing.” He swallowed, throat drier than before, feeling his pulse pound in his ears. “I suspect I can guess on what you have spent so much of your hundred pounds,” he added, trying to tease, turning the question away. “I have spent it on much of the same, although I must confess, I have little head for spirits.” Most had, in fact, gone to buy the tender and not-so-tender ministrations of some of Kingston’s discrete molly-house men, although he certainly spared some for drink.

“I am sober yet, sir,” Bush promised him. “Or should I say, I am sober again. I fear I have gone from sober to drunk and returned. But there will be time enough for more celebration once I have rested. And are you well, sir?” 'Sir.' Bush was using that word with frequency, as if it delighted him as much as it had when Horatio’s promotion was sent down a few weeks ago. That, too, sent a queer shiver of interest through the newly made commander. 

“Quite well, Mister Bush.”

They could have left it at that, both drifting on the gentle currents of the Kingston heat, the strange lucidity that comes once the body has cleared itself of drink consumed in the hours before, the softness of the wide feather mattress. They had decided on sharing only the one bed between them, neither thinking he would spend enough time there to make a second bed or room worth the trouble.

Quite easily they could have left it, save that Bush had spent many months observing Horatio, and Horatio, never accomplished at hiding his emotions, was poorer yet for the waking sleep he found himself in, tangled as much in the heavy, pervasive heat and the stink of sweat and rum as the damp sheets and his own thoughts.

“Sir?” Bush asked, voice pitched low. Neither he nor Horatio had moved, and his lips brushed too closely to Horatio’s ear for comfort, even for a man who spent his days crowded by hundreds of other men and the limits of a ship. “Sir, what’s on your mind?”

“It’s a matter of no import,” Hornblower said, trying to be strict and unreadable, as the captains he most admired had always seemed to him. Bush gave no sign of being deterred. 

“I heard you with that pretty dark-haired molly, Horatio,” he said lowly, and when Horatio could not help the way he froze, suddenly ignorant of the sweltering Kingston night, his guts turned to ice and his mind frighteningly, shockingly clear, Bush went on soothingly: “I didn’t mind a bit. So if it’s that that’s troubling you, don’t let it.” 

“It concerns you,” Horatio allowed, after swallowing nervously. His hands had begun to tremble in the wake of the shock. The heat was again upon him, hotter that it had seemed before, and he thought it might bake his brain in his skull if he were to lie here much longer.

“I thought it had to. You were calling him ‘William’ while you buggered him, and I’d lay a guinea that’s not his name.” 

Horatio flushed hotly, mind awash with Bush’s simple approval, his continued presence in the bed with a man he understood to admire him. He was all awhirl with what he dared not think of as hope. “It is more than that. It’s worse,” he added, with a cold trickle of guilt, because it was. 

“Could it really be so bad? Here, in Kingston? A man can have thoughts in Kingston.” 

“I-” Horatio started, and then stopped. He wanted badly to unburden himself to Bush, who had become so swiftly his dearest friend, the most important figure in his life. But he was ashamed of it, truly ashamed. In the face of Bush’s honesty his fantasy was cruel and unworthy. 

“I wish you would tell me, Horatio,” Bush whispered. “However bad you think it is.” He touched the tip of his tongue to Horatio’s earlobe, lips closing over it a moment later. Then came a soft suction, the feeling neither particularly pleasant nor particularly unpleasant, and yet somehow Horatio wished it would not stop. Bush was being very bold now. Horatio wanted to be bold, too, but what he had to offer was less honest than this frank seduction. 

“I had a thought for-- for the way your eyes sparkle when you have been drinking.” 

“Mmm,” Bush said, very solemnly. His mouth slipped from ear to jaw, from jaw to neck, which he kissed slowly. He smelt of rum, of sweat and the tropic heat, and Horatio had to close his eyes to make himself continue. 

“For-- for how helpless you seem when you are drunk. Too much even to stand, Mister Bush, it was inexcusable.” 

“Mm-hmm. Very bad of me, sir,” Bush said contritely against his skin. “I’m fortunate I had you to protect me.” 

“I might not have done. I might have taken advantage of you.” 

The brush of Bush’s lips ceased, for a moment, and then the lieutenant shifted his entire body, closer to Horatio’s rather than further away as might have been expected. One leg was flung across Hornblower’s, and Bush’s hips tucked against his thigh, so that Horatio could feel the hot, half-limp weight of his prick. Then the kissing began again. 

“Might you have, sir?” Bush said, a deep, warm note in his voice Horatio had rarely heard before. 

“Yes.” Horatio steeled himself, buoyed by the memory of these strong impressions, and the touch of Bush’s mouth. “You were entirely insensate. I could have touched you, could have undressed you then and there without more than the slightest protest. How beautiful you were, babbling, smiling at me like a fool. I could have lifted your legs, this way, that way, asked you to spread them yourself. You’d not even have been aware of my meaning until--” 

“Until you were inside me, sir?” 

Bush’s calm acceptance of this strange fantasy was undoing him. 

“So large and strong,” Horatio whispered. “Yet so helpless in my hands. Not injured, this time-!” No, not that horrible moment on the deck of the _Renown_ \-- that memory held no pleasure, except seeing Bush’s eyes open and knowing that he was not dead. 

“Only drunk, sir. Stinking drunk and all yours to toy with.” Bush might do well to sound a bit less intrigued by this, Horatio thought crossly, writhing fitfully on the bed, small, useless motions of his hips under Bush’s thick leg. “Weak as a baby. Too stupid to remember the Articles of War. And you confirmed a superior officer, too.” Bush’s hips slid against his leg, and he was no longer half limp, no longer limp at all. “I’ve known for weeks, now, that it would be right-- to call you ‘sir’. That you were the better. A leader of men.” 

Now a strong hand closed over Horatio’s straining prick and he bit his lip to cut off a shout. The night was hot, Horatio’s blood was hot, but Bush’s hand had a heat like fire. He gripped, he stroked, he pitched Horatio into confusion and constant tremors of pleasure. 

“There I lie, helpless and you having your way with me. I might have tried to refuse you a moment, but you’d tell me that you knew better. And I’d believe you,” Bush mused, his voice taking on a hot edge, and Horatio was surprised-- and gratified-- to hear that he was straining to speak conversationally now. Perhaps he was as adrift in this strange swamp of Kingston heat as Horatio. “Or perhaps you wouldn’t try to explain, just flip me on my front and work a finger in. You’d ruin me, sir. A mutineer if I disobeyed, a sod if I didn’t.” 

“Bush, Bush, you must not--” but Bush did not stop, his pumping hand still mercilessly pulling Horatio from pleasure to pleasure. His skin was fever hot where they touched, and Horatio thought dizzily it must be himself who was feverish.

“Touch me, Horatio, please,” Bush begged, and Horatio stirred his arm, his hand, to return the grip. Bush made an animal sound, the lowing of a bull. 

“You came in tonight with that look in your eye,” Horatio said, each word a painful confession, a splinter festering in his mind that was now torn free. A relief, too, and he let it carry him, giddy with release, calmed where the horrible fancies had been rotting in his brain, driving him toward madness. He thought, foolishly, that he might float away. “Stupid with fatigue and drink, so helpless again and so lovely all covered in sweat.” 

“Tell me what you meant to do.” 

“Nothing,” Horatio said, inadvertently honest in that moment, but Bush shook his head, frowning, his grip slacking a bit. 

“I, I-” Horatio groped for words, turning his head to look at Bush, the sweat gleaming on his skin and his eyes bright, trying dizzily to say what he would have done, if he were a man so dark-hearted that he could act on these cruel fantasies-- instead of simply being the sort of coward who had them. “I could see my chance at once. I only had to wait until you fell asleep. And then I’d have you, like a molly here in this bed.” 

That was more to Bush’s liking, and his grip tightened, and his hips thrust and his prick wept against Horatio’s inexpert hand. 

“Would you be cruel with me?” 

Never. “Brutal. Merciless. I’d unman you as you dreamed, as you drifted unable to understand what was giving you such pain, and such pleasure--” 

He felt a gush of warm liquid against his hand and startled at the realization that Bush had reached his peak, there, avidly listening to the description of his own rape. It was perverse, dreadful-- perfect, to that dark part of Horatio’s brain that would one day be posited to be reptilian. He broke off his litany and lost himself in the beauty of Bush’s dazed expression, the sweet acceptance in his eyes, the images his monologue had inspired and it was not long at all until he spilled himself across Bush’s hand in exchange. 

He shuddered, curling half in on himself in the vulnerability of the moment, and Bush embraced him, stroking a damp streak away from his cheek. 

“I knew you were a queer one already, sir. It’s all right,” he said tenderly, kissing Horatio’s curls. 

“You must know-- I would never. I would never,” Horatio said desperately, and was soothed and shushed like a child. 

“I do know it,” Bush assured him. 

“You do not want to-- not while you slept, not while you were drunk?” 

“No sir, it’d be a pretty bad business.” Bush seemed not to care that a moment before he had given every evidence of being delighted by the idea. “But I know you’re a gentleman. And you’re very pretty when you’re pretending to be cruel. I’ve known it since the first day I met you. I just didn’t realize what I knew, then.” 

Hornblower could make nothing of this alarming speech, so he clung to Bush wordlessly and did not try to respond. 

“I knew you were a queer one already,” Bush said again, tousling his hair and then petting it back into order as gently as a mother with a babe. “I wish you’d always tell me these fancies and plans of yours, instead of letting them gnaw on you like you do.” 

“I fear you would find most of them less interesting. Certainly less criminal.” He swallowed. “You, I suppose, are too honest a character to have unreasonable fancies.” 

“Do you suppose so, sir?” Bush’s voice was shrewd. “I might tell you a dream or two I’ve had that could prove you wrong.” 

“Oh-!” The idea of Bush whispering filth into his ear made his toes curl; his sorely-used prick nevertheless tried to rise to the occasion once more. It could not manage it; he was done in. 

“There’s always tomorrow,” Bush said, and kissed his head again before his embrace slackened a bit and he let out a long sigh. “I’m worn through, Horatio. It’s going to be the death of me, and there’s fifty pounds left to spend.” 

“Then sleep,” Hornblower said, with a great welling of tenderness. “Sleep and tell me what you dream-- tomorrow.” 

“Good night, sir,” Bush said, and did, almost all at once. 

Horatio had to struggle to keep his eyes open, to watch him. The scars from the battle for the _Renown_ were still red and lurid on Bush’s broad torso. They made him angry. He knew all at once that his wicked fantasy should never come to pass: he would not see Bush harmed again if he could prevent it. He would take off his own hand first, and certainly the hand of anyone else who thought to misuse Bush in that way. He was conscious of a huge incomprehensible gratitude at this strong, solid man who liked him despite himself. 

He had the presence of mind to stand on tottering legs and go to lock the door-- a long weary journey across a sticky floor, but Bush had, as he suspected, been too tired to think of it. Now they were safe. 

And then he laid himself beside Bush like a protective bulwark, and they both slept in utter security.

**Author's Note:**

> So! Installment number one [as written, if not sequentially for the series, developments will develop and numbering will change accordingly] in a series of Queer Fancies [which name we will never stop using, because we are collectively twelve years old]. Some of the kinks we have planned are ones we haven’t written before, and we’ll try to handle them right. The age of sail is a terrible influence.


End file.
